Anatomy of de Killer
by Mister Mystery
Summary: Shelly de Killer reflects on the past that brought him to where he is today. Rated M for language and violence. Please read and review.
1. Routine

"Good evening, Mr. Doe!" The short, rather stumpy middle aged woman says in French, her tone jovial.

"Good evening, Ms. Aveline," I reply as I cross the lobby of the apartment complex, my diction flawless.

"Long day at work again, I suppose?" She asks politely.

I turn towards her, the silencer of my shoulder holstered pistol digging gently into my ribs. "Quite." I sigh, not entirely insincere in my weariness. "But I can't complain."

"Oh I know exactly what you mean. I hate not being busy! If I weren't doing something every day I think I'd just go crazy, wouldn't you?"

Ms. Aveline's rambling, far from grating on my nerves, actually tends to relax me. But I find myself wanting to get away. I need to be alone right now.

"Ms. Aveline, my most sincere apologies, but I am quite tired, and I have a busy day tomorrow."

She balks at my interruption for a moment, unused to my speaking out of turn, before quickly regaining her composure. "Oh, of course, of course! Don't let me keep you! You have a good sleep Mr. Doe!"

I bend at the waist in a little bow to my landlady before heading for the elevator. "Good night, Ms. Aveline."

I stand stiffly at the side of the elevator as it rises to the top floor. I wait until the doors are open for a few seconds before stepping out from cover and walking briskly towards my apartment door at the end of the hall. The key is in my hand and the door unlocked in seconds. I enter quickly, shutting the door behind me. I go from room to room, confirming there are no intruders. I check under each and every piece of furniture and decoration for the usual bombs or listening devices. It doesn't take long. The safehouse is rather spartan.

Finding nothing, I begin to relax. It is a long process. First, I remove my weapons - the pistol with silencer and shoulder holster, plus the spare clips. Then the knives, from my right forearm, lower back, left thigh, and right ankle. I hide them all in the usual places around the safehouse, so that I am never far from a weapon should the need arise. I check to make sure the pistol is loaded and working properly, then stow it under my pillow on the bed.

I take off my suit jacket and bow tie, hanging them in the closet next to the others. Then comes the black vest and white dress shirt, followed by the suit pants. I hang these in the closet as well and retrieving my silk pajamas. I dress quietly, listening intently for anything out of the ordinary. There is only the noise of late night Paris traffic out the window.

The last thing I remove is the monocle, setting it gently on the nightstand next to the bed. I head for the bathroom and take a look at myself in the mirror. The scar down the middle of my face leers back at me. I ignore it. I trim the day's growth off my moustache and brush my teeth before turning out the lights and laying down in my bed.

I can't sleep. I knew I wouldn't be able to. The moment I saw my target today I knew I wouldn't be sleeping for some time. It was only stubborn propriety keeping me laying in the bed. It wasn't enough.

I stand and walk over to the window, looking out on the wonderful view of Paris it provides. I shouldn't be doing this. I should be trying to get to sleep. I'd need the rest for tomorrow. But I can't help myself.

I lean on the windowsill and stare out at Paris. And I remember.


	2. Young and Reckless

I remember when I was young and reckless. I joined the army at eighteen. Father wasn't exactly proud, but then, father was never proud. It got me out of London. That was all I wanted.

I served for some years, seeing combat in much of the Middle East with a company of other young men as maladjusted as I was. I made many friends in my time in the army. I saw most of them die in front of me at one time or another.

If there was anything about the service that I didn't regret, it was the times when my section was out of combat. We would sit about in the barracks and discuss anything from a stupid young soldier's form of politics to which officer we thought was most deserving of a boot to the head. The last day I spent with my section was one of those times.

"I'm jus' sayin', that Atkins fella doesn't know what the fuck 'e's on about." McTaggart. The smallest, loudest Scot I have yet encountered. Topping out at around one and a half meters, I believe he felt he had to make up for his lack of height with a domineering personality. Most of us felt he was a blowhard, but as a member of our section, every one of us would die for him.

"And you do? That's a laugh." Brenton. Most people called her Emily. Tougher than most anyone I knew. She could drink any one of us under the table, and often did. I rather liked her, but I had a feeling so did most everyone else.

"'Course I do! Me family's been in the army for four generations!" McTaggart puffed out his shoulders proudly.

"Sod off, McTaggart," I said idly, looking up from my book. "When you enlisted, they had to show you which end of the gun to hold."

A chorus of impressed noises and appreciative laughter. I reached down off my bunk and felt James De Soto high five me.

"Oh, and you're some kinda supersoldier, eh de Forge?" McTaggart shot back.

"He _does_ have the highest number of confirmed kills," De Soto chimed in below me.

"That's 'cause he's always rushin' ahead, throwin' himself into tha deep end all the time! He'd be dead by now, he weren't so lucky!"

"So would you. Shit, so would we all," Emily said as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her footlocker.

"That's me point! So what the fuck's this Atkins bastard got that we don't got? Fuck, we got as much guts as 'e does, but does 'e talk to us like we do? No, 'e's content to talk to us like we're a bunch a fuckin' pansies who've never seen combat!"

The silence that followed his little outburst said it all. He had a point, and we all knew it. Corporal Atkins was not making any friends in this section, that much was certain. Though to be fair, we were all a little bitter about Corporal Pennington being reassigned to another squad. I'm not sure we would have liked _anyone_ who replaced him.

Suddenly, the door to the barracks flew open. Speak of the devil.

"De Forge, come with me," Atkins barked. "The Major wants to speak with you."

I made a mental note of the page I was on and lept off my bunk, throwing my book to James as I left. Atkins led me across the base to the Major's office. I looked at his face, trying to glean what this was about. All I could gather was that he was quite angry about something.

He opened the door and I walked into Major Ravenshaw's office. Atkins closed the door behind me and left. I was alone.

Ravenshaw was a soldier. You could tell because he looked uncomfortable behind a desk. He had jet black hair and a strange lopsided grin from the scar on his left cheek. He was one of the few officers nearly everyone liked.

"Shelldon Victor de Forge," he recited, reading from a file on his desk which I presumed to be mine. "Lance Corporal. Demolition and munitions specialist. Been with the service four years. Numerous commendations for meritorious service in the line of duty and outstanding bravery. Various reprimands for disobeying orders in the line of duty. One hundred and thirteen confirmed enemy kills."

He looked up at me, his eyes betraying no hint of what was to come. I could be getting a promotion or an execution. "Am I correct so far?"

"Yes sir."

He leaned back in his chair and looked at me over laced fingers.

"What do you know about black ops, de Forge?"

I remember blinking stupidly for a few moments, my famous cool faltering. That was the _last_ thing I expected him to ask.

I remember every detail of the conversation that followed. It was my introduction to the SAS.


	3. Last Words

I remember leaving that very day for Credenhill. I realize now that this is why Atkins was angry - he didn't appreciate one of his best soldiers being appropriated by the SAS on such short notice, and so shortly after taking command of my section. I don't know if he ever told the rest of them where I went.

I remember beginning the six month crash course they put every applicant through. The long marches, the psychological tests, the escape and evasion test, the interrogation resistance exercise, the jungle training, and the parachute drop tests. It was perhaps the hardest six months of my entire life. But I made it through, pushing past every obstacle, evading every soldier, resisting every interrogation technique, fighting my way through the jungle, and leaping off several planes and one balloon. At the end of it, I got my 'Sabre' wings.

I remember my C.O. Staff Sergeant Wainwright. A big man with a heart that I was certain was coal. Harsh at the best of times, punishing at his worst. His loyalty was to the job, never to his men. The others resented him for it, but never said a word.

I remember the one good friend I made in the SAS. Corporal Joseph Kempler. You'd never know to look at him that he knew twenty different ways to kill a man with his bare hands, and had used more than half of them in the past. He was really quite amiable for a professional killer.

I remember his last mission.

"Five hundred meters and closing," he whispered.

The long convoy of trucks and jeeps drove on, closing in on the rendezvous point. I steadied my breathing. The stock of the sniper rifle pressed against my right shoulder. I didn't move a muscle.

Slowly, the trucks came to a halt, and the occupants emerged from their vehicles. I scanned the crowd through the scope, searching for our target.

"There he is..." I heard Joseph mutter as he spotted him through his binoculars. "Center right, shaking hands with the Arab."

I saw him. Bogdan Gurov, international arms dealer. The briefing said he had indirectly been responsible for more deaths than the last two Gulf Wars. I didn't know if that was true or not. What _was_ true was the he was going to be selling serious explosives and munitions to the renegade General Achmed fighting against UN forces in the Middle East, and we couldn't have that. Orders were to kill Gurov, destroy the munitions, and get back to the extraction point without getting murdered. It was a tall order, but I didn't particularly care about the danger. I was still quite young.

"Got him in my sights."

"Steady. Wait until his back is turned."

Gurov was speaking animatedly with an Arab man in military garb. I assumed he was arguing over price, or perhaps offering him a 'discount' on other merchandise. Eventually, he put his arm around the Arab's shoulders and walked off, still waving his free arm about. The Arab buyer looked extremely uncomfortable.

"Now's the time," Joseph said, taking a deep breath. "Take the shot."

I lined up Gurov in my scope, adjusted for gravity and wind, and took a deep breath.

A bullet from a rifle may be traveling at very high speeds, but it is still just a bullet. It has very little mass. When it enters the skull, it doesn't transfer much kinetic energy to the victim, but when it exits, it takes flesh and blood and bone with it, dragging behind it in the vacuum created by the bullet passing through the head. What this means is that when a man is shot in the head with a high powered rifle, there is an explosion of gore in the opposite direction of where he was shot.

We had used this fact to our advantage. The rifle was subsonic and silenced, so there was no sound accompanying the shot, and we had waited until his back was turned. Since his head exploded in the opposite direction, and most snipers will wait until they can see the face of their target to confirm a kill, the soldiers and mercenaries gathered in the clearing all assumed that the shot had come from the opposite direction, and turned away from us.

"That's a confirmed kill," Joseph whispered.

I turned my attention to the trucks of munitions. I put the center of a box marked "боеприпасы" in my sights and took another breath.

I felt the shockwave of the explosion hit me like a slap to the chest. The first truck's explosion ended up setting off the rest, the other two trucks disappearing in a haze of fire and smoke.

Joseph exhaled a breath he must have been holding for some time. He turned and grinned at me. "I owe you a pint for that one."

"A pint? That was worth a bloody _pitcher_," I said as I stood.

Suddenly, there was shouting. I got down in a crouch while Joseph threw up his binoculars.

"Shit. We have to go. Now." He didn't bother to explain, but I figured one of the soldiers down below must have been smart enough to figure out which direction we were actually shooting from, and happened to see me as I stood up. Overconfidence. A serious mistake on my part.

We ran back through the forest, heading for the extraction point. I heard shouting and gunfire behind me. Still far, but they were gaining on us. Joseph was on his radio, trying to get the chopper pilot to hurry up. It wouldn't do any good. He was still several clicks out.

Suddenly the tree beside me exploded into splinters. I fell to the ground and heard Joseph open fire with his submachine gun. The bullets whistled over my head and I heard a scream from somewhere behind me. I flew to my feet and chased after Joseph. We couldn't evade them now, we had to outrun them.

We arrived at the extraction point a few minutes early. A large clearing with no cover. I stuck to a boulder near the edge of the forest and pulled out my sidearm. Joseph fired several bursts into the trees to try and suppress them, but they kept coming. I was almost certain we weren't going to make it out alive.

Eventually the consistent thrum of helicopter blades could be heard. "Go!" I shouted to Joseph, waving towards the clearing. He hesitated, then burst from behind his cover, racing for the center. I fired several shots into the trees to cover him before racing after.

He turned and leveled his weapon on me. "_Get down!_" He shouted. I leapt into the ground and heard the death scream of a soldier behind me, and saw Joseph's chest explode, blood trailing out of multiple wounds. He fell to the ground, almost in slow motion, and I stood and ran to him. Blood rushed through my ears, deafening me as I tried to ascertain the damage. He coughed blood and tried to speak. I could barely hear him over my heartbeat and the helicopter blades.

"Ah shit," he coughed. "Shit shit, fucking shit-"

"Don't speak, you fucking idiot," I practically shouted at him.

"I don't wanna die, Shelly, I don't wanna-"

"I said shut the fuck up!"

"Shelly." He wasn't listening to me. His fist tightened as he grabbed my ghillie suit. "Shelly, stay alive, man. Stay alive and don't go crazy. You gotta live for me too."

I didn't know what to say to that. I still don't.

The minigun on the copter above cut loose, tearing into the trees. The soldiers that didn't fall back were torn to pieces. The searchlight on the chopper trained itself on us.

I remember how he looked as he died in my arms. Ghostly, almost ethereal underneath the light of the chopper. Blood flowed freely from his mouth as his head fell to the side.

I remember the final words of Joseph Kempler, and I wonder if I failed him.


End file.
